Posted by Joe P in Campaign HQ - Candidates Joe and Steve - Introductions
Hello Everyone,

I think it’s good for candidates to properly introduce themselves as human beings. Or human-looking androids. Or time traveling aliens from the future posing as humans. You know, whatever it is they actually are. It’s never good to assume people just know everything about you.

The real first name I actually go by in life is Joe, and my real last name does start with P. When I joined the club, I was overly concerned about managing Google search results for my name because I worked in a very small industry, so I didn’t list my full last name. I care less about this now, but I don’t see the need to list my last name on here anyway. I am 37 years old, and I am currently employed full time as a manager of a software development team. When I’m not working or doing STF stuff, I like to spend time with my wife and our two miniature schnauzers.

I joined STF in August of 2010, and have been a member since then with no significant breaks. I’ve done a lot of things out-of-character for the club in that time. Here is an incomplete list of things I’ve done for the club, in something vaguely resembling chronological order:

• Academy Science Course Tutor: I did this for about two years after I got out of Academy
• Academy Vice Commandant: Did it for about 16 months. We streamlined the Academy and its graduation process. We also created the Graduation Evaluation system, to make sure people were actually teaching the right things.
• Vice President of the club: Under Lindsay, during her first term. There was another time but it was a mistake that only lasted one month…
• Internet Director: I rebuilt the department from scratch after everyone in it went AWOL for a term
• President of the club: I came up with the idea of X-Fleet and passed the BOXES bylaw to create it. I also started us down the long path of getting rid of Drupal.
• Librarian: I inherited this because the old Library is really complicated to build properly (Docbook XML w/ XSLT transforms). I still have this job and don’t actually want it anymore.
• Assistant Internet Director: I discovered the President at the time was using multiple accounts, and started the first ever impeachment. He quit before he could be fully impeached. We banned him permanently for trying to crack other user’s accounts.
• Academy Commandant: It was actually a pretty boring term that could have been better
• Coder: This was literally for just a day before we passed TECH
• TECH: I’ve been on TECH since it was created. I spent a few years designing and implementing a custom web application for STF, from scratch, which replaced our Drupal-based website right before it was going to fail due to being unsupported. I did not do this by myself, but it would not have succeeded without me. Had we failed, the club would no longer exist today.
• EGO: I don’t actually remember how many terms I’ve done on EGO. I think 2? 1.3? Ehh. EGO is pretty dull most of the time anyway.

In character, I’m CO of the Europa, which I have commanded for 11 years now (probably too many, actually). I had an especially long run as the XO of the Atlantis, and I’ve also COed and XOed ships within the Academy. My favorite space jobs for my characters are in Science; at one point I had three CSOs at once. I also like playing Engineers. I’m too medically illiterate to play any medical roles whatsoever. I’m actually a little tired of playing characters, but I haven’t found a good time to break into GMing to give that a try.

Anyway, that’s a brief summary of Joe P. I’m happy to be approached on Discord (though if I’m busy in real life, I’ll ignore the message until I can pay attention to it fully), and you can also feel free to email me about anything. I also intend to answer any questions asked of me at all during the election, and you can feel free to ask questions about any of this.

Finally, if you want a laugh, you can also look at this post I wrote exactly 10 years ago: https://www.star-fleet.com/webb/node/484707

– Joe

Hi my name is Steve
(Hi Steve)
And it has been three weeks since I’ve had any fish…

Wait, sorry, the kiddos, you know……..

For those who don’t know me, I’m Steve, and I joined this club a few years ago, give or take a couple of decades (December 1999 for anyone counting). At the time I was a young naïve teenager who had been given the “free reins” of the internet (okay it was AOL), when I stumbled across STF, and I’ve honestly been hooked ever since. I’ve been pretty much continuously posting in the group since ‘99, except for a short break I took in 2006 while I was in college.

A quick bio on me outside of STF. I’m a sales/product manager for an automotive aftermarket company, so please don’t look for me the first week in November, I will be in Vegas for “work.” Outside of that, my wife and I have 2 kids, 2 year old and a 5 months old. Needless to say, my last 2 years have been very interesting. And in the limited free time I have outside of work, kids, and STF, I do still have a few other hobbies. I’m hoping to go back to our local community band when that eventually starts back up, I have taken up leatherworking over the last couple of years (if you ask I can show you some of the things I’ve done!), and I have the even more expensive hobby of photography.

But back to why we are here. I won’t make you sit through my entire STF resume, but here are some of the quick highlights. I have been President twice, VP 3 times (including the rest of Joe’s other time), various cabinet positions, FComm, EGO, CO of Outpost 45 and the Chimera, and so many years in various positions on the Academy ships that I’ve lost count, which has landed me as the CO of the Challenger again.

I have to say that honestly STF has been one of my homes away from home for the last 20+ years. I’ve done a little bit of everything in the simming community over the years, from helping to found many different fleets, to helping to run some of the biggest groups out there. But nothing has ever felt as comfortable and welcoming to me as back here in STF. We have our ups and downs, but what family doesn’t?

I know of very few people more committed to this club then Joe. So when Joe initially approached me with the ideas we are going to share with you here, you can understand why I was concerned, even a bit frightened about what it could mean. But the more we talked about it, and we flushed out the ideas, I became more and more excited. Not just for the possible outcome of all of this, but for what it could do to help strengthen the community I have grown to love over my time here.

All I ask is that you go into this with an open mind.

If you have any questions, please just ask! I will do my best to answer any and all questions that are asked of me, and feel free to hit me up in Discord. Though if you ask me in Discord in the evening or weekends, I make no guarantees that my kid hasn’t stolen my phone!

• Steve